[Tucker], Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War

Josiah Tucker was born in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in December 1713 and educated at St John’s College, Oxford. He moved to Bristol where, a protege of Bishop Joseph Butler, he became curate of St Stephen’s in 1737 and vicar in 1750, a canon of Bristol Cathedral in 1742, and dean of Gloucester Cathedral in 1758, under which title he published his Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War. As Tucker began, after Saratoga and with France and Spain joining the American War for Independence, it ‘seems to be allowed on all Hands, that the present Crisis of public Affairs, is most dangerous and alarming’. He then argues for the futility, if not impossibility, of subjugating America by force, before listing the advantages of abandoning the effort. Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was interred in Gloucester Cathedral, which he had done much to restore.